Computer Animation

Five years ago, Happy Feet opened, and I didn’t know what to think. What looked like a little kiddie musical ended up being, well, a kiddie musical, but not one that could ever be described as small. For a movie about an outcast (Mumble, voiced by Elijah Wood) growing up and finding his voice, Happy Feet escaped the droll, played-out tropes that its recycled premise imply. Instead, it had all the weight of a World changing for the worse, which only worked to add a supremely weird but successful sense of humor.

That director George Miller would attempt to strike gold twice seemed like a gamble; but though Happy Feet Two doesn’t live up to its predecessor, it does take another unimaginative story and builds it up into a massive film with fantastic moments.

If you’ve got a moment check out this interesting CGI-animated video for indie singer/songwriter Essie Jain‘s “What A Big Wide World” taken from her upcoming album Until The Light Of Morning. The video was directed by Caroline Melis.

It’s old news that Pixar is able to take their family friendly characters – adorable bugs, monsters and robots – and endow them with real depth and emotionality. They can do this better than just about anyone else in the business, whether working with actual live people or no.

Still, there’s a scene towards the end of Toy Story 3 that came out of nowhere and shook me to the bone. They push these characters, these plastic and plush toys, into a place that make you feel heartbreak and compassion, while evoking existential questions of what comes at the end, and can we really move on? It’s powerful, it’s absurdly powerful. And, let’s just say I was happy to have a pair of dark 3D glasses to hide my eyes behind while it all happened.

I’d tell you that you’ll know this scene when you see it, but the truth is I just described at least two different sequences in Toy Story 3. And even when the movie isn’t playing with your heart like an old piece of silly putty, it’s doing everything that it can to make you edge to the tip of your seat, laugh, and feel like a kid again.

It goes without saying that the first Shrek film is the best of the bunch. It was, at the time, a fresh take on fairy tales that hit at the height of Sarcasm’s popularity. The sense of humor was relevant and the references were ripe for a different take. What I find so interesting is that Shrek (or perhaps more accurately, the first half-hour of Shrek) could feel so fresh while its sequels, Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third, could be such boring retreads that never came close to topping the predecessor.

Maybe it’s because of this, a feeling that all of Shrek‘s sequels were stagnant curses to the genre of animation, that I walked into the supposedly final installment of the Shrek series with such low hopes. But maybe it’s because of those expectations for the worst that made Shrek Forever After not just a non-annoying film to sit through, but one that I even kind of liked.